"The whole world, the vision of God at one moment, an abyss. — Abyss in which I stand lost on all sides!, see a great work without a name and everywhere full of names!, full of voices and forces! I do not feel myself in that place where the harmony of all these voices resounds into one ear, but what here in my place I hear by way of abbreviated, confusing sound — this much I know and hear with certainty — also has something harmonious in it!, also resounds as a song of praise in the ear of Him for whom space and time are nothing. — The human ear stays around for a few moments, and only hears few notes, often only a vexatious tuning of false notes, for this ear came precisely at the time of tuning-up and unfortunately perhaps landed in the whirlwind of one corner. The enlightened human being of later time — he wants to be not only a hearer of all but himself the final epitomizing note of all notes!, mirror of all the past and representative of the purpose of the composition of all its scenes! The precocious child slanders and blasphemes — alas, if it were even only possibly the after-echo of the last left-over death-sound or a part of the tuning!
Among the great tree of the father of all whose peak reaches above all the heavens and whose roots reach beneath worlds and hell, am I am eagle on this tree?, am I the raven who on his shoulder daily brings the worlds' evening greeting to his ear? What a little strand of foliage of the tree I may be!, a small comma or dash in the book of all worlds!"

 - Johann Gottfried von Herder, This Too a Philosophy of History for the Formation of Humanity, in Herder: Philosophical Writings - pp. 336-7

"Blooms, as Rilke knew, are all business; they exist for butterflies and bees, but only incidentally for us, for whom flowers are fortuitous. Autumn's hues are even more serendipital; the function of the leaves has been fulfilled, and their colors are the result of useless residues. The beauty of the world happens only in our eye; even the allure of women is as utilitarian as a wagon's wheel. The Worpswede light, the way the countryside's colors glow even on a dim wet evening, the festive stars and the warm windows of distant farms, the comforting purl of a stream: those are the purest accidents. So when one of us turns aside from living in order to admire life; when a rose petal is allowed to cool an eyelid; when a line of charcoal depicts the inviting length of a thigh; we are no longer going in nature's direction but contrary to it. What was never meant for us becomes ours entirely; what never had a use is suddenly all we need. Gradually, what Rilke's Russian adventure had appeared to teach him—how to live in harmony with nature, so appealing to the poet—would prove itself impossible for the poem"

- William H. Gass, Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation - pp. 20-1